Read Ebook: Twenty-Five Cent Dinners for Families of Six by Corson Juliet

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 102 lines and 66306 words, and 3 pages

Keep your bread in a covered earthen jar; when it is too stale to eat, or make into bread broth, dry it in a cool oven, or over the top of the fire, roll it with a rolling-pin, sift it through a sieve, and save the finest crumbs to roll fish or chops in for frying, and the largest for puddings. If a whole loaf is stale put it into a tight tin can, and either steam it, or put it into a moderately warm oven for half an hour; it will then be as good as fresh bread to the taste, and a great deal more healthy.

A good allowance of bread each day is as follows: for a man two pounds, costing six cents; for boys and women one pound and a half, costing five cents; for children a pound each, costing three cents.

SOUP.

The value of soup as food cannot be overestimated.

In times of scarcity and distress, when the question has arisen of how to feed the largest number of persons upon the least quantity of food, the aliment chosen has always been soup. There are two reasons for this: first, by the addition of water to the ingredients used we secure the aid of this important agent in distributing nutrition equally throughout the blood, to await final absorption; and, second, we gain that sense of repletion so necessary to the satisfaction of hunger--the fact being acknowledged that the sensation we call hunger is often allayed by the presence of even innutritious substances in the stomach.

Good soup is literally the juice of any ingredient from which it is made--the extract of the meat, grains, or vegetables composing it. The most economical of soups, eaten with bread, will satisfy the hunger of the hardest worker. The absolute nutritive value of soup depends, of course, upon its ingredients; and these can easily be chosen in reference to the maintenance of health. For instance, the pot-liquor in which meat has been boiled needs only the addition of a few dumplings or cereals, and seasoning, to form a perfect nutriment. That produced from skin and bones can be made equally palatable and nutritious by boiling with it a few vegetables and sweet herbs, and some rice, barley, or oatmeal. Even the gelatinous residue produced by long-continued boiling, without the presence of any foreign matter, is a useful emollient application to the inflamed mucous surfaces in some diseases, while it affords at the same time the degree of distention necessary to prevent flatulency.

The time required to make the most palatable and nutritious soup is short. Lean meat should be chopped fine, placed in cold water, in the proportion of a pint to each pound, slowly heated, and thoroughly skimmed. Five minutes' boiling will extract from the meat every particle of its nutriment and flavor. The liquor can then be strained off, seasoned, and eaten with bread, biscuit, or vegetables. Peas or beans boiled and added to the soup make it the most perfect food for sustaining health and strength. It is the pure juice of the meat and contains all its savory and life-giving principles.

If your family is large, it will be well for you to keep a clean saucepan, or pot on the back of the stove to receive all the clean scraps of meat, bones, and remains of poultry and game, which are found in every kitchen; but vegetables should not be put into it, as they are apt to sour. The proper proportions for soup are one pound of meat and bone to one and a half quarts of cold water; the meat and bones to be well chopped and broken up, and put over the fire in cold water, being brought slowly to a boil, and carefully skimmed as often as any scum rises; and being maintained at a steady boiling point from two to six hours, as time permits; one hour before the stock is done, add to it one carrot and one turnip pared, one onion stuck with three cloves, and a bouquet of sweet herbs.

When soup is to be boiled six hours you must allow two quarts of water to every pound of meat, and you must see that the pot boils slowly and regularly, and is well skimmed. When you want to keep soup from one meal to another, or over night, you must pour it into an earthen pot, or bowl, because it will turn by being allowed to remain in the metal pot.

I shall give you first some receipts for making soups without meat, and then some of the cheapest meat soups I have tried. The first is very cheap and nutritious, and should be served at meals where no meat is to be used; bread, and a cheap pudding, will be sufficient to use with it.

Soup can be made from any green vegetable or herb in the same way.

At the end of three quarters of an hour stir together over the fire in a large sauce-pan one ounce each of butter and flour, and when they are nicely browned, gradually add, and mix with an egg-whip or large fork, a pint of the boiling soup. Take up the meat and dumplings on the same dish, strain the soup into the sauce you have just made, and mix it thoroughly; put a little of it over the meat and dumplings, and serve the rest in the soup tureen; it is very nice with small dice of toast in it.

Both dishes make an excellent dinner, at a cost of about twenty-five cents, including bread.

PEAS, BEANS, LENTILS, AND MAIZE.

Before giving you receipts for cooking peas, beans, and lentils, I want to show you how important they are as foods. I have already spoken of the heat and flesh forming properties of food as the test of its usefulness; try to understand that a laboring man needs twelve ounces and a half of heat food, and half an ounce of flesh-food every day to keep him healthy. One pound, or one and a quarter pints of dried peas, beans, or lentils, contains nearly six ounces of heat food, and half an ounce of flesh food; that is, nearly as much heat-food, and more than twice as much flesh food as wheat. A little fat, salt meat, or suet, cooked with them, to bring up their amount of heat-food to the right point, makes either of them the best and most strengthening food a workingman can have. The only objection to their frequent use is the fact that their skins are sometimes hard to digest; but if you make them into soup, or pudding, rubbing them through a sieve after they are partly cooked, you will be safe from any danger.

As soon as the peas and bacon are brown, serve them with boiled potatoes or bread, they make a good dinner, and with the hasty pudding, cost only about twenty-five cents.

There is as much difference in the quality of Indian meal as there is in its preparation; Southern meal is undoubtedly finer than Northern, and Southern cooks are proverbial for their skill in using it. I am indebted for some of the preceding receipts to a friend in Maryland, and I advise my readers to buy Southern meal, if they can get it, and test them thoroughly. Meal that is ground by hand or water power is superior to that ground by steam, because it is less heated in the process.

Indian corn is an excellent food in temperate and warm climates; and from its abundant yield, and easy cultivation, it is one of the cheapest of cereals. It contains the nitrates, or flesh-forming properties, in an excessive degree. It is a palatable and nutritious diet whether eaten green, parched, or ground into meal.

CHEAP FISH AND MEAT DINNERS.

I have already spoken of the value of fish as strengthening food, and in support of what I say I need only to remind you how vigorous and healthy the inhabitants of the sea coast usually are, especially if they eat red-blooded fish. This fact, in connection with the abundance and cheapness of fish makes it an important article in the dietary of the good housekeeper.

Fish may be cooked by boiling, baking, broiling, and frying; boiling is the least economical method of cooking fish, and fish soup, or fish chowder the most saving; broiled fish wastes but little of its nutriment, but its bulk is decreased; baked fish ranks next to fish soup in point of economy.

Fish are preserved for winter use by cleaning them, rubbing them with salt, packing them in layers, and covering them with brine. An excellent way of pickling fish is to clean them, cut off the heads, tails, and fins, wash them, and then rub them well with salt and spice, pack them in layers in an earthen crock or deep dish, cover them with vinegar, and tie the jar over with buttered paper; they are then ready to bake slowly for about four hours; and will keep for three or four weeks after they are cooked.

In London, and other large English cities, where fried fish forms an important item of popular food, it is cooked with great care, and in such a manner as to retain all its nourishing qualities. It is well washed in salted water, dried on a clean cloth, cut in slices if large, dipped in a rather thin batter, made of flour, salt, pepper, and cold water, and then dropped into a pan containing plenty of fat heated until it is smoking hot, but does not boil; the pan is then taken from the fire, and by the time the fat is growing cool the fish is cooked. A novice would do best by maintaining the fat at the proper degree of heat until the fish is cooked.

The receipts which I give for fish are calculated to produce compound dishes from it, hearty enough to make the bulk of a meal.

With bread the dinner will cost twenty-five cents.

Be careful to keep all meat stews closely covered, or a great deal of the nutriment of the meat will escape in the steam.

Parsnips are exceedingly nutritious and cheap, but if they are not liked potatoes may be substituted for them.

The entire dinner with bread and butter will cost about twenty-five cents.

The dinner will cost you about thirty cents, and you have on hand the broth for breakfast.

The dinner will cost about twenty cents.

SUNDAY DINNERS.

Sunday is the workingman's festival. It is not only a day of rest from manual labor, a breathing space in his struggle for existence, an interval during which his devotional aspirations may have full exercise; it is the forerunner of a new phase of life, in which toil is laid aside for the gentler occupations of home, if he is a man of family, and for rest and relaxation in any case.

The duty of making home pleasant, which a good wife feels, is doubly felt upon the days when the bread-winner abides in it. The husband of such a wife seldom passes his Sundays in strange places: he is content to accept the day according to its recognized signification, and when it has passed he is all the more ready to begin his daily work again. Because much of the comfort of home depends upon good and economical meals, and because Sunday dinners ought to be better than those of working days, we must make Monday dinners supplementary to them; the cost of Saturday night's marketing must be divided between the two days, in order to keep within our financial margin. Good examples of this management may be found in the receipts given in this chapter for ROAST FOWL and FRIED CHICKEN, ? LA MODE BEEF and MEAT PATTIES, BOILED MUTTON and KROMESKYS, and ROAST VEAL and VEAL AND HAM PATTIES. These receipts show how by the exercise of a little judgment in buying, and economy in managing food, we can have our Sunday fowl, or joint of meat, without incurring any expense unwarranted by the figures to which this little book confines us.

Meantime, while the fowl is boiling, peel one quart of potatoes, and lay them in cold water. At the end of one hour take the fowl from the pot, taking care to strain and save the pot liquor, put it into a dripping pan with the potatoes, season them both with a teaspoonful of salt, and quarter of a teaspoonful of pepper, and put them in a rather quick oven to bake for about one hour. When both are well done, and nicely browned, take them up on hot dishes, and keep them hot while you make the following gravy:

In carving the chicken cut off the drumsticks, wings, and neck carefully, and lay them aside; use the second joints, breast and fleshy parts, for dinner; and after dinner cut up what remains of the carcass in neat pieces, which you must save with the pieces first cut off, to use for FRIED CHICKEN.

Half the cost of the Roast Chicken, stuffed, and the Baked Potatoes, will be thirty-eight cents.

The dinner will cost about twenty-five cents.

The dish will cost twenty-seven cents, or less.

The dish, which is palatable and nutritious, costs less than twelve cents.

Turn a plate over the meat, and put a clean stone on it to keep the meat under the pickle; turn the meat every day, keeping it in a cool place.

Use the pot-liquor in which it was boiled, with quarter of a pound of rice, for the next morning's breakfast. The cost of both dishes will not exceed twenty cents.

After stuffing the shoulder, lay it in a dripping pan with one cent's worth of soup greens, and put it in a hot oven to brown it quickly; when it is brown take it out of the oven, season with salt and pepper, baste it with a little sweet drippings, return it to the oven, and bake it thoroughly fifteen minutes to each pound. Meantime wash one quart of potatoes, pare a ring off each one, and boil them in plenty of boiling water and salt. When the veal is done take it up on a hot dish, pour half a pint of boiling water in the dripping pan, scrape it well, and strain the contents; set this gravy again over the fire to boil while you mix a tablespoonful of flour, in half a cup of cold water; stir this smoothly into the gravy, boil it for five minutes, and serve it with the roast veal and boiled potatoes.

Be careful to save all that remains from the dinner, towards making the VEAL AND HAM PATTIES; the proportionate cost will be about thirty cents.

The dinner will cost about thirty cents.

CHEAP PUDDINGS, PIES, AND CAKES.

Good puddings are nutritious and wholesome, and an excellent variety can be made at a comparatively small expense. Pies, as they are usually made, with greasy and indigestible pastry, are positively unhealthy; if they are made with a plain bottom crust, and abundantly filled with ripe fresh or dried fruit, they are not so objectionable. Rich cake is always an extravagance, but some of the plainer kinds are pleasant additions to lunch and supper; we subjoin a few good receipts.

When it is done take it from the pot, unroll it from the cloth, and serve it with a few cents' worth of molasses; it will cost about twenty cents.

DESSERT DISHES.

The previous chapter was devoted to cheap and good sweet dishes of the kind usually called dessert in this country; the dessert proper, however, consists of fruit, creams, ices, small and delicate cakes, fancy crackers, and confectionery. We give here directions for making some of these enjoyable delicacies at a very moderate rate.

It must always be borne in mind that the prices quoted are those which prevail when the articles specified are in season, and consequently abundant and cheap. As apples are very plentiful, and generally cheap, we shall begin with dishes made from them.

The flavor of the dish may be changed by varying the spice, and by occasionally using a little wine or brandy with the sugar. The cost of a dish large enough for half a dozen persons will be covered by ten cents, unless it is made when apples are scarce and dear.

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet